path: root/CH-6.txt

Now we have the scene when Steven and Hiroshi explain everything to her. Or perhaps a better idea would be to add in the scene with Norm and Ed and the other guy at the biner.


she actually has information that the nerd cabal does not when they give her their information in this chapter. 

Then Chapter 7 sees her head down to San Deigo and someone, not John follows her there. That's the mystery man, the other person who picked up Sil's broadcast.

In the explanation of radio for espinoge work in something to point out that radio is not networked, not prone to network failure, all it requires is a bit of power to broadcast and someone with an anttane to recive, which to this day makes it considerably more reliable than any networked for of communication.









After she left Norm went back inside. No one would come tonight. It was Tuesday night, everyone went to Walt's house for poker on Tuesdays. Norm went inside and locked the door behind him. He went behind the bar and pulled out the bottle of Dewers and set it on the bar. He pulled the phone over from the wall and sat down. He poured himself a shot and slugged it back. He poured another and drank it. He picked up the phone and dialed the number he'd been thinking about all day. The connection was bad, the line warbled like it was underwater, but he recognized the voice. "We need to talk."

								------




It took her four days in the DoD archives but she managed to match nearly everyone in the photo to their service records. In the end she came up two short. The photo Norm Canton had given her either included two men that were not part of the squadron or its auxiliary crews, or she had found her mystery man. Twice.

She was back in Annapolis by the end of the week.

This time Norm Canton wasn't around, but another former '34er by the name of Ed Wald let her in the office and, for what it's worth he said, after staring for a while at the photo said he did not recall either of her mystery men.

She spent half of the night poring over more photos, trying to find the men in any other photos, but there was nothing. By the time she gave up the bar out front was in full swing with Ed and several other men shooting pool and playing old Merle Haggart and Johnny Cash songs on the jukebox. Chase let them buy her a couple of drinks and listened to a few stories about Norm's efforts in organizing the archive. Eventually hunger persuaded her to leave and she followed their advice to an all-night diner down by the wharf. It was starting to rained when she pulled in and gathered up her things for an all-night retracing of her steps.

She found a empty booth by the window and watched the rivulets of rain run down the window while she waited on a patty melt and fries. She was just finishing the food when a man approached her booth and sat down without saying anything. It took her a minute, but she recognized him form the VFW. She was startled enough by his strange entrance that she didn't say anything, she just stared stupidly at him. he seemed nervous, as though he were in hurry, but unsure how to begin.

"Ms. Chase..."

"Just Chase."

"Sorry. Chase. This man you're looking for, is it all the same to you if you find him or you don't?"

Chase was taken aback, it wasn't a question she had been expecting. She thought about saying something about the family's right to know, but sensed that the man, Shummaker, she remembered Wald calling him, though she had never caught a first name, wasn't going to buy the family angle. "I guess it might be, but I like to think that everyone's story is worth being told, that we all live on a little bit as long as someone knows our story, knows something of us."

Shummaker nodded, rubbed his chin and said nothing for a moment. "Some stories have a lot of pain in them..."

"Almost all of them do."

"So why tell them?" 

Chase sighed, she had thought that Shummaker might have some helpful tidbit to pass along, but she was beginning to doubt that. "Avoiding the pain doesn't make it go away. You can't just bury it and hope that somehow no one will ever find it."

"Hmph. I think you might be able to do just that actually. A lot of things happened in the war, a lot of things that each of us who is there will take to the grave and story will be gone, the pain will be gone."

Chase didn't say anything.

He nodded some more, picked up the salt shaker and rolled it between his hands. "I'm dying."

It caught her off guard and before she could say anything he went on.

"I have cancer and it's going to kill me. The closer I get to the end the more I think that all those little lies we've all told over the years, even the very innocent lies, they all add up to something bad, something very bad that we have to drag around with us everyday..."

"Lies?"

He waved his hand. "Nothing specific to do with your man, I mean all our lies, the lies you tell yourself at night when you look int he mirror before you go to bed, the lies you whisper in the children's ears to help them sleep at night. All of it builds up, it grows, it becomes a thing inside you that you have to carry around. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to unburden myself just because I know I'm dying. I don't care about me at all, it's them I want to help..." he trailed off and fell silent.

Chase pulled out the photo. She pointed to the man she thought was Lt. Lawrence. "That's Lawrence isn't it?"

Shummaker looked down at the image. He nodded.

"Why were they lying to me then? What happened?"

Shummaker smiled at her. "I don't know. I assume that's what you're going to find out. I just know that one day he was gone and no one ever told me anything. In fact Wald and TK would never talk about it. I spent three years during the war with those two, we had no secrets. Except for that one." 

She nodded. "So, when you say he left, what... he went AWOL?"

Shummaker look uncomfortable. "Something like that."

Then it clicked and her eyebrows shot up. "He deserted?" 

Shummaker looked down at his coffee. "I really don't know." 

"I'm looking for a deserter?"

"You're looking for someone who doesn't want to be found."

Chase's heart was beating so hard she was sure Shummaker could here. She said nothing and he eased out of the booth without looking at her again. She watched him walk out of the diner and amble across the parking lot to a '70s Impala. She couldn't get the idea out of her head, I could be looking for someone who's still alive.




------------------------



"Let me get this straight, you think this Lt. Lawrence was a deserter?" Steven was chewing with his mouth open again. Chase cringed. He did it whenever he was distracted by conversation he considered more interesting than whatever he was eating. It was part of the reason Chase almost always insisted they sit side by side at a counter whenever they went out for lunch. She kept her head down, sipped her coffee.

"I don't know." She spun the cup in her hands. "It's a possibility." 

"You know what that means right? This guy could still be alive." Steven pushed back the plate of fries and twisted his tool to face Chase. "Holy shit. I mean holy shit. Have you thought this through?"

"I check the records he'd be 93 if he were..."

"Have you told Tk bassman what's going on?"

"Of course not. This has already gone too far to bring it to TK bossman now." She had actually been considering doing just that all day, but she wasn't about to admit it to Steven. And she couldn't shake the feeling that that was exactly what her anonymous tipster wanted her to do. She didn't want to give them the satisfaction until she had the satisfaction of knowing who they were. "Besides I've already run the name through everything we have and there's nothing much there. Certainly no mention of desertion. There was even a note saying he was MIA, so I'm not the first person to look into this one." Chase shook her head. "Part of the problem is that record keeping in the Caribbean Theater was apparently some sort of a joke during the war. Or at least early on in the war."

"I didn't even know there was a Caribbean theater..." Steven stuff the last of the chicken sandwich in this mouth and wipe the crumbs from his lips.

"I didn't either," admitted Chase. "But I do now and by all accounts it was a fucked up command."

"How do you mean?"

Chase shrugged. "Usual power struggles, Navy not wanting to be under the Army, Army appointed to the top position by someone in Washington... the thing is Washington cared enough to keep an eye on the top guys. The canal was down there you know, they considered that a prime target from both sides. There were U-Boats all over the Caribbean as early as 1938. So Washington was always watching closely enough that the infighting stayed mostly out of sight. But the top guys didn't care enough to pay attention to much that was going on below them it seems. And the bases were so spread out, no one was really watching what happened. Well. Except for the Canal, they were watching the Canal. I've found records for nearly every ship that went through it from 1939 until the end of the war."

"Hmm, I thought the Canal was all we had. Guantanmo I guess. I didn't know we had any other bases down there." Steven waved for the bill.

"We didn't and we don't really anymore. But when the Germans invaded Belgium and then France we took over a lot of their bases. Except for some French commander who decided to throw in his lot with the Vichy government."

"Fucking French." Steven laughed.


They were headed back to the office when Chase spotted a familiar looking dark green Jaguar in her rearview mirror. She had already seen twice in as many days, but had dismissed it both times. I'm getting paranoid she thought. This time she wasn't so sure. She made a few deliberate but unnecessary turns and the car stuck with them. Steven asked where she was going, but she didn't say anything and he fell silent as she zigzagged her way toward the mall. She waited until they were on Peensyvania avenue and she put a large SUV between them.

"Take the wheel."

"What?"

"Take the wheel dammit." Steven reached over and helf the wheel as Chase climbed into the backseat. "Now slide over." Steven did as he was told. 

"Where do you want me to go?"

"Get in the right lane, I'm getting out at the light. She glanced behind them and sure enoug, it was still there, changing lanes, but Steven darted over faster and car was still int he lane next to them and five cars back when they stopped at the light. Claire ducked down in the seat and opened the door. "Just drive straight, I'll call you," She said and ducked out the door, keeping low to the ground. She crusched behind a set of newspaper racks and ignored the two mean who stopped to stare. She waited until the light turned green and then carefully moved forward the racks until the Jaguar passed and she stood up, pen in hand and wrote downt he license plate with shaking hands. As soon aas she had it she turned down a side street and walked as fast as she could toward the crowd of people exiting a long row of buses parked between the Washington and Lincoln monuments. She fumbled through her purse and pulled out her phone. It took her several fumbling tries to find Stevens name on her phone. Get ahold of yourself she kept repeating. Breathe. She calmed down a little talking to Steven. She told him to go back to work without her, she would take the metro back later. She needed to be outside, to walk off her nervous energy and to be lost in the crowds for a while. She walked the entire length of the Mall.

A couple of kids sat on the steps of the Lincoln memorial. Somebody out on the quad was flying a kite. The leaves had already started to turn orangish, bits of yellow. It was just and another ordinary Tuesday afternoon in Washington D.C. But someone was obviously keeping tabs on her.